Latest / The SEANC View / Budget negotiations may stretch beyond July 1 deadline

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Budget negotiations may stretch beyond July 1 deadline · The SEANC View

• 0:00
  Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the Scenic View podcast.
• 0:04
  I'm your host, Jonathan Owens, your communications director here at Scenic,
• 0:07
  alongside executive director Artis Watkins, government relations director Suzanne
• 0:13
  Beasley, and podcast producer Sam Klein. Welcome, everyone.
• 0:18
  Let's go. Let's have a great episode.
• 0:22
  Music.
• 0:30
  All right. Today is Thursday, June 12th. It's already June 12th.
• 0:36
  That's like half of the year. It's already gone. Can you believe that? Just that quick.
• 0:40
  That's how it happens. It has been really quick, it seems like.
• 0:42
  It seems like only yesterday. It was 2024.
• 0:46
  Every day is a week in 2025. Exactly.
• 0:49
  Yeah. Anyway, I think this might be the hottest week of the year so far. It's really muggy.
• 0:54
  I think the first thing you said is that I think this is the hottest year I
• 0:57
  remember to this point. Like, winter was warm.
• 1:02
  The spring was really warm.
• 1:04
  Yeah. I always think that August is like the hottest time of the year. It will be.
• 1:08
  I think we're all just miserable. If it gets worse than this.
• 1:11
  Oh, it's going to get a lot worse. Oh, yeah. We're not even there yet.
• 1:14
  I went to a soccer tournament on the weekend. It poured down rain for 20 minutes,
• 1:19
  and they had everyone evacuating.
• 1:21
  And then as soon as we came back in, I was like, I'm sticky. Well, the steam, right.
• 1:25
  We had a huge flash flood in Sanford. Did y'all see that?
• 1:29
  Like our downtown flood, and we had like five inches of rain in like two hours.
• 1:33
  You seem to get a lot of these. It was insane.
• 1:35
  Yeah. You know? Yeah, we're the epicenter of. Of everything.
• 1:39
  Of climate change in the world.
• 1:41
  Sanford. Sanford. Where it all happens. Yeah.
• 1:44
  But yeah, so I guess we'll just dive right in. What's going on at the legislature?
• 1:49
  Any new updates? Oh, goodness.
• 1:52
  Again, another light week. You know, budget talks are still happening behind closed doors.
• 1:57
  Nobody's sharing any details yet, so I don't have anything new to share with you guys.
• 2:02
  What we are hearing this week that's different from last week is that they are
• 2:07
  probably going to go home at the end of the month with no budget.
• 2:11
  With no budget. maybe take off July, possibly come back in August, possibly in October.
• 2:18
  So it's a big old bunch of who knows.
• 2:20
  Wow, I didn't. That's news. Breaking news. We need a little.
• 2:23
  Well, it's just a different rumor.
• 2:25
  We should get a breaking news. And there's always lots of them. Yeah.
• 2:29
  And each chamber has their own rumors. Yeah. We'll see.
• 2:32
  But remember back in the day when it was a co-speakership on the House side and they left.
• 2:39
  They did. They left the Senate. The Senate didn't know the House had left.
• 2:45
  Which is kind of— That happened. That literally happened. The Senate's done
• 2:48
  that to the House, too. Sounds so petty.
• 2:52
  Well, last week you said that the tax plans are the big stumbling block right now.
• 2:57
  Is that— Yeah, because if you can't figure out, agree amongst yourselves what
• 3:01
  you want to bring in— Then nothing else is going to work. Right.
• 3:06
  Well, do you think absent of any news on that front is maybe that's why we're
• 3:10
  seeing little tweets from like Luke Farley talking about raises for his employees and.
• 3:16
  Right. So what John's talking about last Tuesday, because it was Council Estate
• 3:21
  Meeting Day, Commissioner Luke Farley, Department of Labor, put out a tweet,
• 3:26
  a video tweet that said, hey, good news.
• 3:29
  I want to announce a couple things from the Department of Labor.
• 3:31
  One was about human trafficking, and the other one was we're going to give,
• 3:36
  not the legislature, but that the Department of Labor itself was going to increase
• 3:39
  safety and compliance officer salaries by 5%.
• 3:44
  Yeah. Where did that come from? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, he didn't say one
• 3:48
  has to assume vacant positions.
• 3:50
  The problem is, what were those positions doing? Because Department of Labor is very small.
• 3:56
  You used to work there, right? I worked. Yeah, I did work there.
• 3:59
  Extensively, what? Definitely understand the Department of Labor.
• 4:03
  But it's such a vital department that is so much smaller than it really should
• 4:08
  be that I don't know where you're taking money to get that.
• 4:12
  Anyway, I don't know where he's getting it. Maybe we can find some more about that out.
• 4:16
  But it's not the only agency. Yeah, we also had some announcements about DMV this week.
• 4:22
  Yeah, I saw. So there was also a tweet or ex-post from NCDOT,
• 4:28
  their official account, and it was welcoming 80 new driver's license examiners with DMV.
• 4:34
  So that's great. That's headed in the right direction. But were these positions
• 4:38
  already positions that were there and they just were vacant?
• 4:41
  Or are these additional positions like, you know, former Commissioner Wayne
• 4:45
  Goodwin asked for? There's a little bit of confusion about where they're coming from.
• 4:50
  80 additional examiners. Yeah. That kind of sounds.
• 4:54
  I mean, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the question.
• 4:57
  Everybody's saying we're going to make DMV more efficient. Well,
• 5:00
  if you fill the vacancies, that's.
• 5:03
  They will be more efficient. Yeah, they'll definitely be more efficient because
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  you'll have more people. That's what the employees there have been telling God
• 5:09
  and everybody and nobody's listening.
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  And that's what Commissioner Goodwin told the legislature before,
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  was we need even more than we have. The population has ballooned.
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  We're working with the same number of examiners. Of course, people are going to stand in lines.
• 5:23
  And there was some news also about pay increase that
• 5:28
  the examiners would get. Is that correct? Yes.
• 5:31
  So that happened just a few weeks ago, similar to what Department of Labor apparently
• 5:36
  is doing, where they're targeting some pay increases in-house before the legislature gets the budget done.
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  A message went out from DOT to driver's license examiners, and it said,
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  look, we're basically we're reclassifying y'all.
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  And so, for instance, for a driver's license examiner one, that position will
• 5:54
  be granted $844 to bring them closer to market rate.
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  And then once the budget's passed, it says if funding is available,
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  the employees in the driver's license examiner one positions will be granted
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  the remainder of the difference to bring them to market rate,
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  which is a really strange thing.
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  844 per driver license examiner one is very specific, but it's kind of like
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  we're giving you a down payment on bringing you up to market rate and we may
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  or may not actually do the rest. If that money exists.
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  So the agencies seem to be, they're so desperate that they're getting money
• 6:30
  from somewhere, taking it upon themselves to say, we can't keep these people
• 6:35
  or go get these people if we don't take every dollar and throw it at this issue.
• 6:39
  And that begs a larger question.
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  We can all agree. You're watching agency heads from both parties,
• 6:47
  whose big bosses from opposite parties say, yeah, we're going to raise certain
• 6:53
  people's salaries in-house out of necessity.
• 6:56
  Why are these agency heads, it's clear there's an issue, why are they not down
• 7:00
  there screaming at the legislature that, guys,
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  you're talking about having one agency look at everybody's positions and salaries
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  and determine if they're efficient.
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  These agency heads seem to be saying things are not efficient over here.
• 7:14
  We got to move some money around because what we're doing is not efficient.
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  That is the opposite of saying you're going to put one council estate member
• 7:23
  in charge of deciding how to make government efficient.
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  So it's an interesting thing to me. It's a completely different philosophy to
• 7:31
  say, yep, let the agency heads figure out, here's your money,
• 7:35
  figure out how you can best use it versus we're going to tell you how to be efficient.
• 7:39
  And both of those things are happening at the same time.
• 7:42
  Yeah, it seems like. Is that efficient?
• 7:45
  No, crazy inefficient. So didn't the house budget kind of leave it up to agency
• 7:51
  heads to make cuts more so than the.
• 7:54
  Yeah, they gave them, you know, there's this amount of money that you've got
• 7:57
  to cut and however many positions that takes, y'all got to figure it out.
• 8:01
  Yeah. Right. Which, okay, let's walk through that, though.
• 8:05
  Most of the agencies don't have, they've been cutting and cutting and cutting.
• 8:09
  Again, North Carolina's population has grown and grown and grown.
• 8:12
  The only way to continue to cut across the board in every agency with the population
• 8:18
  growing is to give people less, to give North Carolinians less,
• 8:21
  less safety, less services, less health.
• 8:25
  To take it a step further, like these actions that labor and at DMV show that
• 8:31
  there needs to be more investment, not less.
• 8:34
  I mean, there needs to be more investment in jobs.
• 8:37
  It's just an admission of that, right? at me.
• 8:39
  But yeah, and at the same time, if you're making agencies do it this way,
• 8:43
  I don't know how Commissioner Farley's getting the money for the 5% for compliance and safety folks.
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  I also don't know if that means occupational safety and health administration
• 8:53
  folks or if it extends all the way to boiler and pressure vessel,
• 8:57
  elevator and amusement devices,
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  folks like that who do things that are definitely compliance and safety,
• 9:03
  but I don't know when he says compliance and safety if they're included.
• 9:07
  So when he's giving certain raises, is that leaving a problem somewhere else?
• 9:14
  And again, there's administrative people that support those functions.
• 9:17
  And trust me, without them, those safety officers will tell you they can't get the job done.
• 9:23
  Are those folks being covered? And I think it points out that we can't wait
• 9:27
  until September for another.
• 9:29
  I mean, it's time to get something done, right? One would think.
• 9:33
  Obviously, if these two agents. I mean, we're in critical vacancy mode and have
• 9:38
  been for so long and cutting positions in these budgets, whatever's in the final
• 9:43
  budget, that may make that vacancy rate look better on paper.
• 9:46
  But like you were just saying, services are going to suffer.
• 9:49
  Well, you can have all the compliance officers in the world,
• 9:51
  but if nobody's there to process the work they do, it still bogs down and you
• 9:57
  end up with safety as an issue. So I'm really just curious.
• 10:00
  I hope and pray that's not putting agency heads further in a position of having
• 10:06
  to rob Peter to pay Paul because that catches up.
• 10:10
  So obviously, we'll keep watching the state budget. Absolutely.
• 10:14
  But it's fascinating to watch. Again, on the one hand, there's so much of an
• 10:19
  argument being made down there to centralize all of these efficiencies and have
• 10:22
  the auditor determine them.
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  And on the other hand, the agencies are being very free willy right now out of necessity.
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  So I can't really tell where we're headed in the long run. And that's where
• 10:34
  it becomes scary from a policy perspective.
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  Like the legislature needs to know. And in these subcommittee meetings of appropriations,
• 10:42
  that's where traditionally you go and you say, I've got a hell of a problem
• 10:46
  with this one group and I need to pay them more.
• 10:50
  Just an aside, doesn't it seem some of these agency heads are a little more
• 10:54
  vocal than in years past?
• 10:56
  Especially like the auditor. I know folks.
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  Social media has probably helped that a lot. I mean. But they're not vocal about
• 11:04
  their positions. Like they'll tell other people.
• 11:07
  Yeah, we can't. afford to have less positions, but they're not being vocal with
• 11:12
  the legislature about that for whatever reasons.
• 11:15
  Yeah. So if you're an agency head and you want more investment in your department,
• 11:19
  please sit down there and fight for them. Yeah.
• 11:21
  If you think it's going to affect the public's life, the quality of life of
• 11:25
  the public, if you have less people, we need to hear from you.
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  The public needs you to speak.
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  And was it last year or the year before we had our press conference and had
• 11:34
  folks from both sides of the aisle supporting us, right?
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  It was all Republicans that put up. At the press conference.
• 11:40
  Oh, yeah, the press conference. But, you know, we did have support on both sides.
• 11:43
  But, yeah, that was an impactful press conference. I mean, that was across the
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  board in state government.
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  Is it David Smith? Yeah. Yeah. You know, he's the— Such a legend.
• 11:54
  Yeah, such a—and he's like, this is—it's never been this bad.
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  It's never been this bad, so—,
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  And by this bad, what he was talking about is we've never had such a vacancy
• 12:05
  crisis where we just couldn't fill positions because of the salary and workload
• 12:10
  that it was putting the agency in that big a bind trying to provide services,
• 12:15
  in their case, to all the taxpayers, but especially to farmers and other folks
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  involved in some way with agriculture or life sciences.
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  And we're still in that crisis.
• 12:26
  Another issue that came up last week, the end of the week, I guess it was Thursday,
• 12:31
  State Treasurer Brad Briner announced that the state health plan is kind of
• 12:35
  at an impasse with CVS Caremark.
• 12:38
  I guess it's the PBM contract for the state health plan.
• 12:42
  Lots of confusion, it seems like. I was confused reading it right there.
• 12:47
  Well, our members think that this contractual issue is because of moving to
• 12:51
  Aetna. Yeah, and CVS Caremark was the PBM under Blue Cross as well.
• 12:56
  It's totally different.
• 12:58
  And the PBM is Pharmacy Benefits Manager. Yeah.
• 13:02
  So CVS Caremark and Aetna have a shared relationship in terms of ownership,
• 13:08
  parent company situation.
• 13:10
  But these are two different contracts. And like John said, CVS Caremark was
• 13:15
  our PBM under Blue Cross Blue Shield as well when they were the administrator of the health plan.
• 13:20
  But this is about this current contract between the PBM and the health plan.
• 13:26
  So Briner or the state health plan is saying that Caremark is failing to produce
• 13:31
  rebates that amount to tens of million dollars since 2023.
• 13:36
  The News and Observer asked just how much. And the plan told the reporter that
• 13:41
  it was at least $10 million in 2023 and it could be $21 million in 2024.
• 13:48
  That's a huge chunk of money. And they also say that Care Mart is demanding
• 13:54
  to rewrite parts of the current contract.
• 13:57
  And if the plan had to do that, it could cause premiums to go up annually from $100 to $500 per member.
• 14:05
  So a sticky situation, I guess. Well, I mean, we've been through this about
• 14:09
  PBM in the past. And we're not alone in this.
• 14:12
  Most health plans are like this. But with Wagovi, the weight loss drug,
• 14:16
  as an example, that was marked up 4,000 percent from where it sold around the world.
• 14:22
  And we were getting like a 40 percent rebate on that drug.
• 14:26
  That doesn't make you feel any better.
• 14:28
  That's you're still. Didn't even make a dent. You're still thousands of percentage
• 14:32
  points more than you should be paying for it if you're paying something competitive
• 14:37
  with the rest of the world.
• 14:38
  So, judging by the News and Observer story, it seemed to me that this whole
• 14:43
  problem started right around that time when we stopped covering GLP-1 drugs
• 14:48
  and a drug called Humira,
• 14:50
  which is for rheumatoid arthritis.
• 14:53
  Apparently, that caused the rift between CVS Caremark and the plan.
• 14:59
  Yes. I mean, that was a massive amount of money that was no longer being spent
• 15:05
  by the health plan on certain drugs.
• 15:08
  And so what will be interesting is getting the rest of this story from the health plan.
• 15:12
  I think we've got initial indications that somebody from the health plan is
• 15:15
  going to come over here, maybe even the treasurer, and talk about this situation
• 15:20
  because we have so many members so confused over it. And we're seeing a lot
• 15:24
  of comments about, you know, we'll vote them out.
• 15:27
  You know, they're very, there's a lot of anger at the treasurer over this.
• 15:31
  And I think it'd be good for him to explain what's happening here that,
• 15:38
  because it's my understanding that in this case, the treasurer and Tom Friedman,
• 15:43
  the executive administrator of the plan, are actually fighting.
• 15:47
  For. Right, to not have you overcharged through this contract,
• 15:51
  to not renegotiate it, just so people can come, can kind of get back money they
• 15:57
  might be, might be overcharging you somewhere else.
• 16:00
  But they, all that remains to be seen.
• 16:03
  We'll have to see how that plays out. This is something scenic with previous treasurer Falwell.
• 16:09
  It's the kind of thing we've been talking about forever. we don't have transparency
• 16:13
  in seeing what our contractual obligations are, in seeing what places, if any,
• 16:19
  money runs through on the way back home to the state. And that's problematic.
• 16:24
  So we have to rely.
• 16:26
  It's not efficient. But, you know, it's the people's money.
• 16:31
  So stay tuned for that, because I think that we will probably have someone from
• 16:36
  the treasurer's office over...
• 16:38
  To help us with this issue a little bit. Yeah, so just hang on.
• 16:43
  More information. Yeah, I know they're trying to work it out.
• 16:45
  Obviously, what they're doing is their job.
• 16:46
  They're trying to work it out with CVS Caremark and not have to have a huge
• 16:50
  hoopla over it. That's efficient.
• 16:52
  You know, if they can make sure that the health plan members' rights are represented.
• 16:58
  And amicably resolve this, great.
• 17:01
  But, you know. So the only other thing I have for this week was you spoke,
• 17:04
  Artis, at a, was it the state and local government? House, state,
• 17:08
  and local government yesterday.
• 17:10
  Is it yesterday? The day before yesterday. It was Tuesday. Senate Bill 124 is
• 17:14
  a short bill, but the bottom line is it streamlines being able to hire folks when they apply.
• 17:20
  Right now it takes about 182 days, I believe Director Meyer said,
• 17:25
  in committee to, you know, get somebody on board after they're hired.
• 17:28
  It's crazy. It's just crazy. 182?
• 17:31
  182. Yeah, so people leave. Yeah, you're hired. You can wait six months for
• 17:35
  a job. Exactly. They go find something else.
• 17:38
  So the bill passed fine, but, you know, we enjoy a great relationship with Director Meyer and her staff.
• 17:45
  And there was a lot of work with legislators, Senator Corbin.
• 17:49
  Everybody worked with him on this bill. So just a good bill.
• 17:51
  Senator Corbin seems to really want to make sure that we can broaden the pool
• 17:57
  where it doesn't affect the public negatively.
• 18:00
  Broaden the pool of people who can apply for something.
• 18:02
  So imagine, I mean, just imagine having to wait 180 days for your job.
• 18:07
  Yeah, that's nobody can do that. I mean, they've gone somewhere else and found another job.
• 18:11
  And so people want efficiency and they should. Yeah.
• 18:14
  And I think it looks like this was a great step, in my opinion,
• 18:19
  that the legislature is acknowledging we've got somebody that everybody seems
• 18:23
  to trust as our our director of HR.
• 18:26
  And we need to let her modernize this thing and do her job.
• 18:32
  I'm hoping that's where they are anyway. The only thing I will say is that sometimes
• 18:36
  you can overcorrect in that situation because we know from putting jobs out
• 18:40
  that if you make it way, if you make it way too easy for people to apply,
• 18:44
  you'll get like a million job applications for people.
• 18:48
  Who may or may not be qualified for the position that they. Or like even not
• 18:52
  even like not even real people. Yeah.
• 18:55
  It's like those apply through LinkedIn things. Or applying so they can keep
• 18:59
  getting their unemployment.
• 19:01
  Oh, that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, there's no question that that State
• 19:07
  Human Resources Act needed to be looked at. The problem is...
• 19:11
  Over the years, people would tend to call pieces of that act red tape that were
• 19:16
  not, that were just kind of normal protections, guardrails.
• 19:21
  Yeah. That give the employees rights, but also responsibilities and give,
• 19:26
  you know, some guardrails for supervisors to know you can get rid of somebody
• 19:30
  for this reason, but not this one so that they don't go free willy,
• 19:34
  like we keep saying today.
• 19:36
  And that was important because that's not red tape. That's just having some
• 19:41
  boundaries. It's kind of what I've said before.
• 19:43
  It's like shipping a fragile package and not putting any bubble wrap around it. Exactly.
• 19:48
  There you go. So she's trying to actually modernize and get rid of the true
• 19:54
  red tape, but without breaking anything while she's doing it.
• 19:58
  So that's a good sign. And she's so meticulous.
• 20:02
  And maybe we should have her on, too, because, honestly, I think it would be
• 20:06
  very helpful if folks could hear what are the rights of a state employee and
• 20:11
  what are the responsibilities of a state employee.
• 20:13
  And Director Meyer has been in state government for 40 years.
• 20:17
  So she knows. So that's another invite. We just need to, like, start.
• 20:21
  We need to get an invite. We do pretty much invite everyone we know.
• 20:25
  Yeah, anyone can come on here.
• 20:27
  I don't feel special anymore.
• 20:30
  Maybe we should get some like nice embossed invitations and send them out to
• 20:34
  people. Like some wedding kind of invitation.
• 20:38
  You were cordially invited to the Scene of You podcast. We will give you a candy bar.
• 20:45
  That'll just be taped to the invitation. Kind of like the little kid Valentine.
• 20:49
  Oh, there's like a sucker in the middle of it. So before we get to my question
• 20:53
  of the week, I think we should have a second to do.
• 20:56
  We should maybe have like a new segment where it's like.
• 21:00
  Sam, what's going on in your world? What's going on in your generation right
• 21:04
  now? In your whole generation?
• 21:06
  She has to speak for the whole generation. Yes, be the voice of your generation.
• 21:09
  But yeah, I think we should have the Gen Z minute on the podcast.
• 21:13
  Yeah, I like that. What about Taylor Swift?
• 21:15
  I was going to say, has Taylor Swift done anything? Taylor Swift has bought
• 21:18
  her masters back. She owns every single song she has ever written.
• 21:23
  We should have led with that. Again, my goodness. She also just dropped her summer merch.
• 21:29
  Merch there's some people who are judging it but you know not every merch is
• 21:32
  going to be for everyone that's right what's the vibe on her now is she still
• 21:36
  cool or what yeah okay she's so cool she's just kind of laying low right now
• 21:40
  i mean she just she just finished doing a two or for two years so she's kind
• 21:44
  of just resting hanging out relaxing at home hello fellow teenagers.
• 21:50
  No she did go to a wedding this week was it this week it was travis kelsey's
• 21:53
  cousin She attended the wedding with him.
• 21:56
  And my daughter has shown me that the invitation said Taylor and Travis Kelsey.
• 22:01
  So it's like, are they married now or what? This is a deep dive on Taylor this week.
• 22:05
  And then Sabrina Carpenter just announced her new album coming out on August 29th.
• 22:11
  It is called Man's Best Friend. And the first song that she has released that
• 22:15
  was the single for it is called Manchild.
• 22:17
  I don't know where we're going with that, but it feels dangerous.
• 22:21
  It's fun. I'm excited. Petey Pablo, the podcast buff, is...
• 22:27
  That's what he has to say. The reason it's related to Taylor Swift is because
• 22:30
  Sabrina Carpenter opened for Taylor Swift on the Ares Tour.
• 22:33
  And Taylor also posted a tweet before Manchild came out and said it's going
• 22:38
  to be another Sabrina Carpenter summer.
• 22:40
  Okay. And who has any issue with that, right? I mean, it was so much fun last summer.
• 22:45
  Yeah. I had a great time last summer listening to the short and sweet.
• 22:49
  It's always a George Strait summer. I'm a big fan of Sabrina Carpenter.
• 22:52
  But I digress. So let's get to John's Wacky Weird question of the week.
• 22:57
  John's Wacky Weird.
• 22:58
  Music.
• 23:03
  Scroll up on my computer here. Forgot my question there for a second.
• 23:07
  So Father's Day is this weekend. I hope you guys remembered that. Did you? Okay.
• 23:12
  So with that in mind, our question of the week is, who is your favorite TV dad?
• 23:17
  Ooh. And so let's just clear the air and get this one out of the way.
• 23:23
  Andy Griffith, North Carolina.
• 23:25
  He has to be the perfect TV dad emeritus.
• 23:29
  So we will not say him, right? That was like my man growing up.
• 23:33
  I guess I had to watch a lot of Andy Griffith.
• 23:35
  I'm going to throw a couple out. Danny Tanner. Okay, so I guess I'm a TGIF kid.
• 23:42
  Like, I watched that growing up.
• 23:44
  So Danny Tanner from Full House.
• 23:48
  And the Winslow guy from Family Matters. I know who you're talking about.
• 23:53
  Can't remember the name, but I know exactly who you're talking about.
• 23:55
  Carl Winslow. Oh, Carl Winslow, yeah. From Family Matters, yes.
• 23:59
  So those are my two, I guess. Anybody got anything? thing
• 24:02
  you could even say like Walter White from Breaking
• 24:05
  Bad he was a dad right I mean he was he was
• 24:08
  doing the most good Cory Matthews and
• 24:12
  Alan Matthews from what's that from Alan Matthews is Cory's dad in Boy Meets
• 24:17
  World okay and then Cory is a dad in Girl Meets World okay great dads I think
• 24:25
  Alan probably beats out Cory but yeah what about Tim Tim Allen from Home Improvement.
• 24:33
  I think it's because the first person that comes to mind to me is Bill Cosby. I knew it.
• 24:40
  That's like the one you don't want to say, but it's the one, right?
• 24:43
  Well, that character was a really great—they were great parents. Yeah.
• 24:49
  Both characters that played the parents on Cosby. They were great parents.
• 24:53
  I thought it'd be fun to have as parents.
• 24:55
  The opposite dynamic, because the Cosbys, they were a little well-off.
• 24:59
  A doctor and a lawyer for parents, but Roseanne and, oh yeah,
• 25:04
  it was Dan, yeah, so they were working class.
• 25:07
  Dan Connor, yeah. You know, but yeah, Dan was a hoot.
• 25:10
  Yeah. John Goodman, also a great dad on the Righteous Gemstones.
• 25:16
  And a shout out to Ward Cleaver, who is the only dad I ever saw who stayed in
• 25:21
  a starched shirt until bedtime.
• 25:24
  Like, no, that's not true. He did change into a cardigan sometimes for dinner.
• 25:29
  But he was always pleaded and, yeah, that was, for the young people,
• 25:34
  Sam's looking so confused.
• 25:36
  There was a show that predated us by decades, but it was on TV all the time
• 25:40
  for whatever reason, called Leave It to Beaver. I think it was in the 50s.
• 25:44
  Yeah. Oh, no, I know Leave It to Beaver. We have it on DVD at home. Oh, okay.
• 25:48
  Well, Ward Cleaver. I was thinking of someone and I was like, I don't know his name.
• 25:52
  Michael Landon, Little House on the Prairie. Oh, now I did like him as,
• 25:56
  yeah. Eight Simple Rules. Frontier dad.
• 25:58
  The dad from Eight Simple Rules. That's a movie, right? No, Eight Simple Rules is a sitcom.
• 26:04
  I thought you were talking about Ten Things I Hate About You.
• 26:06
  Oh, yeah, John Ritter. Yeah.
• 26:08
  So that's TV dad moment. But anybody want to share anything about their dads
• 26:12
  coming in or anyone in their life as their father figure? I will start.
• 26:17
  My dad is currently in the hospital right now.
• 26:20
  Sending good vibes. Yeah, but I'm in kind of a reminiscent mood these days.
• 26:26
  But he's just such a great dad. He works really hard. He's always worked hard
• 26:31
  my whole life and just hoping he'll get better.
• 26:33
  But it's going to be an interesting Father's Day for us, I think.
• 26:37
  Any memories of your father?
• 26:39
  You know, this one just sticks out to him. I'm like you. I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
• 26:43
  But my dad worked a lot when we were kids. So he was at home a lot.
• 26:48
  He worked for the phone company, Southern Bell.
• 26:50
  Lots of overtime to raise a family of five. But I twirled baton my whole life
• 26:55
  as a child. And there was the Salvation Army gym just up the street here,
• 27:00
  a competition that I was in.
• 27:01
  And my dad never made it to my—he went to the brothers, you know,
• 27:06
  baseball games, but mom went with me to baton.
• 27:09
  But I remember looking up in the doorway, not expecting my dad to be there at
• 27:13
  all. And he was peeping over the people crammed in the doorway watching.
• 27:17
  And I just remember right now to this moment how full of, you know,
• 27:21
  just my dad's here. Let me march.
• 27:24
  Yeah. I'm not going to miss this two-spin. My daddy's watching.
• 27:28
  Yeah, I got a cool dad. That's awesome. I got Rambo.
• 27:32
  Oh, yeah. You do have Rambo. That's not your dad.
• 27:34
  In the military until I was five, and then he was a police officer in Tennessee until I was about 10.
• 27:41
  Now he trains physical technical surveillance to military personnel.
• 27:45
  Travels all over the place. I get to go with him every now and then.
• 27:48
  He'll go to Florida, go to California, Hawaii.
• 27:53
  He's in Clarksville, Tennessee right now, which is actually where I grew up.
• 27:56
  I was a little jealous. I was like, hey, why didn't you tell me?
• 27:59
  I would like to go see some friends from my childhood.
• 28:03
  But he's been working like crazy. He's worked like crazy my whole life.
• 28:07
  When he's home, though, he's relaxing or relaxing.
• 28:10
  Working on his own special projects he likes to build a lot
• 28:13
  of stuff so anytime i want something specific furniture
• 28:17
  wise i just call him so you have a brother do you
• 28:19
  have any other siblings no it's just me and you're his little girl then huh
• 28:24
  yeah you know how that is john i'm the little girl in general because throughout
• 28:29
  college my brother he was not the one who was calling the parents so wasn't
• 28:33
  doing it i i called mom pretty much every day i called dad every day i was like hey Just want to chat.
• 28:39
  So for reference for me, if you brought boys home, would he be waiting with a gun there? Oh, 100%.
• 28:48
  100%. Like actually? Like the song sitting out back 30-30 in his lap?
• 28:54
  Yep, that would be my dad.
• 28:56
  That's so funny. He'd be practicing with the targets out there when they showed
• 29:00
  up. He wouldn't even just be sitting out there with it. He'd be practicing.
• 29:03
  My dad's rule was if he didn't walk in the door and shake his hand.
• 29:06
  If daddy got up out of his chair and shook hands, then I was okay.
• 29:10
  Let me tell you how you do it with the boyfriends of the daughters. Oh, please do.
• 29:14
  You have them work in the yard at some point. And that will tell you everything
• 29:18
  you need to know about whether that's a good one.
• 29:23
  Yeah. My daughter hears this. You know what I'm talking about.
• 29:26
  My daddy will be sending them to the barn.
• 29:29
  He wants them to work work. They're going to be moving their giant round bell
• 29:33
  that weighs 100 pounds. They're going to be cleaning the stalls.
• 29:37
  Prove yourself, young man. It's funny. Like, my dad had two boys,
• 29:40
  right? So he never had a girl.
• 29:43
  He was not a girl dad, you know? And I can't imagine him having a girl.
• 29:48
  Like, I have a girl now. And it's totally different, you know?
• 29:53
  Because I also have a boy. And you're like, oh, yeah, whatever.
• 29:57
  Okay, Suzanne and I, we're not whatever about our sons. But you've got to protect
• 30:04
  the girl, you know? So, I don't know.
• 30:06
  Look at Suzanne's face. She's like, what? Y'all are appalled.
• 30:09
  I got somebody over that boy now.
• 30:12
  I got the brother protection in Raleigh. There you go. There you go.
• 30:15
  Everybody's watching Sam, huh?
• 30:16
  His whole friend group watches me like a hawk. He will most likely,
• 30:20
  if I'm getting hit on at a bar, and I clearly am uncomfortable with it,
• 30:25
  he'll send three or four of his friends over before he'll actually come over.
• 30:30
  He's like, see if you can diffuse the situation. If you can't,
• 30:32
  I'll come over. She's got a whole posse of bodyguards.
• 30:35
  And next thing you know, he comes over and as soon as they see him,
• 30:38
  they're like, you're the brother, aren't you?
• 30:40
  And he's like, yeah. And they just immediately turn around and walk away.
• 30:43
  One more question about your living situation growing up.
• 30:48
  Did you feel any pressure to go into the military or your brother because he did? No, no.
• 30:55
  He was the only one in his family who did it, too. My grandpa wasn't what my
• 31:01
  grandpa on my mom's side was, but there was never any pressure from him for us to join in.
• 31:07
  There was never any pressure from our mom to be a nurse or anything.
• 31:10
  They just said, whatever you want to do, we'll support you as long as you are
• 31:13
  not living under our roof for the rest of your life. Yeah, just get out of here.
• 31:17
  That's where I am, too. Just, you know.
• 31:20
  Anyway. Get out. It's like, we love you, but we don't want you living here forever. Yeah.
• 31:25
  Well, I think that's our episode. Do you have anything? Anybody else have anything to share?
• 31:30
  I could share stuff, but. I was going to say, not for the good of the group.
• 31:35
  We came off the rails there at the end, but it was tight until the end.
• 31:39
  Well, thanks for joining us this week, and we will get back with you next week. Bye.
• 31:45
  Music.